🔒Rising CT film director dives into second feature-length production

Who says actors and directors have to run off to New York or Los Angeles to launch their careers?

Newington native Erik Bloomquist appears to be doing pretty well right here in Connecticut, and he’s only in the early stages of writing his career script.

Bloomquist, 27 and principal of Mainframe Pictures LLC, wrote, created, directed and was lead actor in “Cobblestone Corridor,” a five-episode TV series shot in Hartford and Simsbury, which originally aired on CPTV in 2016.

The Hartford resident and Trinity College alum won two New England Emmy Awards for his directing and writing in Cobblestone.

More recently, Bloomquist has been riding the highs of his feature-film directorial debut, a 2018 psychological thriller called “Long Lost.”

The movie, shot entirely at a Greenwich mansion, won accolades at a number of film festivals and did a 30-city theatrical run before landing on Amazon, where it can be purchased or rented. “Long Lost” has also garnered a solid 71 percent positive rating from critics on the film-review website Rotten Tomatoes.

Now, Bloomquist and Mainframe (which was co-founded by Erik’s brother, Carson Bloomquist) are jumping into their next project, another feature-length film, titled “Ten Minutes to Midnight,” which is about a radio host and her crew trapped overnight in the station by a hurricane. The genre is a cross between Stephen King and a modern-day “Twilight Zone.”

In a recent interview, Erik Bloomquist said he’s got plenty of ambitions for bigger-budget productions, and he thinks Connecticut is a good place to try to make those dreams a reality, despite the fact that the state has pared back its motion-picture tax credits over the past decade.

To build prominence in the industry, Bloomquist said much hinges on building a good network of collaborators (actors and crew alike) and making well-received productions.

“The thing about feature films is, no one’s going to let you direct a feature film until you’ve already directed one,” Bloomquist said. “We just want to keep demonstrating our value and ability to execute. The more we do that, the more relevant our projects become.”

“Cobblestone Corridor” and “Long Lost” have started to build up Mainframe’s brand, he said. The aim is to further build on that with “Ten Minutes to Midnight,” which will start filming in mid-June in Willimantic.

“We’re planning to do a festival run in early 2020 and follow a similar and hopefully more high-profile trajectory than ‘Long Lost,’ ” Bloomquist said.

Finishing a project that gets some attention from critics can help grab interest from investors who may want to help finance the next big project.

One of Bloomquist’s recent investors is Jeffrey Fryer, chief financial officer at Farmington-based biotech startup Rallybio. Fryer, who is financing 25 percent of “Ten Minutes to Midnight” (Bloomquist declined to disclose the project’s overall budget), met Bloomquist after attending a screening of “Long Lost.”

Fryer has appeared as an extra in eight films over the past five years, including several made by Rocky Hill-based Synthetic Cinema. He had mutual connections to Bloomquist through that work.

However, the former Alexion Pharmaceuticals tax executive said this represents the first time he’s investing in a film.

“Having seen ‘Long Lost’ a couple of times now, and seeing some of the other work Erik has done, I’m extremely impressed,” Fryer said.

Fryer said he likes that all of Mainframe’s work has been shot in Connecticut. He wants the state to be a bigger draw in general for filmmakers.

Bloomquist said finding people like Fryer is key for getting projects made.

“The capital is sort of what lights the fuse,” Bloomquist said. “That, in many ways, is the trickiest part, as it probably is for many businesses.”